


The Space Between Eons

by EK (ilyat)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Cannibalism, Gen, Painplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-23
Updated: 2012-08-23
Packaged: 2017-11-12 18:18:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/494242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilyat/pseuds/EK
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For kinkbingo. Double fill for "sensation play" and "ropes/chains".</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Space Between Eons

It is dark and quiet and still.

You don't need to open your eyes to know that it is dark. The shadows are so deep, so intense that they burn right into you, a massive void that sparks a kaleidoscope of color across the insides of your eyelids. If you open your eyes, you'll just see the afterimage of illusion, ocular muscles straining ineffectively to find something that simply _is not there_. If you open your eyes, you'll only see what's left after the end and the nothing that is before the beginning, and right now - for just a little while longer - you want to postpone the inevitable. You keep your eyes shut. Instead, you taste the dark. You part your fanged teeth; you lick what doesn't even pass for lips. It is thick and humid and stagnant.

You don't need to listen to know that it is quiet. Only your breath-not-breath and your pulse-not-pulse offer any change from the irregularity that is the deafening white noise of silence echoing like a roaring waterfall within your very skull. You still your organs for a tenth of a second, one second, ten more, and in the span of eons you can hear the cosmic tick of radioactive decay - as even and regular as any neutron star. The silence is deafening, but you don't need to listen. Instead, you feel time march forward. You permit it. You move it, shape it, _rule_ it. It is your course and your right. It is your domain.

You don't need to feel the air to know that all is still. No wind, no draft, no breath disturbs the space between you and the stone, which rests heavy and immobile, enshrouding you from anything and everything. Your hands lay idle, your body limp, your every muscle at rest as you move beyond relaxed into that state of being-not-being that is - at the same time - there and also _not_. The universe is all around you and yet nowhere at all. Life and death are mere flights of fancy, thoughts of inconsequentially, fading from existence like vague dream bubbles merely because within this space _there. is. no. room._ for them or anything else that does not still itself into nothingness and notime.

It is still and quiet and dark within the confines of your sarcophagus and you revel in it even as you disrupt it.

As you let awareness of _here-and-now_ sweep over you and through you, filling where once the awareness of _all-and-none_ occupied your thoughts, you become aware of the slow measure of your breaths. The air stirs, softly, slightly, and passes across your chin. The sound returns to you, muted, faint, mirrored back and distorted only a bit from the pitted stone scant inches from your face.

The weight around your ankles manifests itself within reality. The metal is cool, but not as cold as your blood and flesh. The shackles are loose, able to turn, but still far too tight to be pulled off.

You stretch as best as you can within the tight confines. The shackles shift, and the heavy chains latched onto them clink-chink links, knocking against one another. You feel their weight around your ankles, as familiar and comfortable as the cold confines of your tomb. If you turn just right, if you reach down your side and draw your leg up until the knee hits the lid, then you can actually press your fingers to the metal of one of the cuffs. On the left is the symbol you've chosen for your own, the ultimate of ironies that you can't wait to bring into fruition. (And when you do, _oh, when you do_ , it will be the most delicious of twists as the beginning-of-the-end becomes the end-of-the-beginning, back and forth and stretching from this existence to _without_ and drawing everything else back _in_.) With a touch you can release the cuff, but for now you let it remain latched. On the right is the symbol that your dear sister, your worse half, has chosen. (A mockery of the life she desires, it is a constant reminder that there is still within you, even now, that terrible cancerous growth that one day you will have to gouge out to be truly free - you will become the doctor so represented by her sign and _cut. her. off._ )

Only when she is gone will you finally be able to act. To finally be truly who you are meant to be.

You pull your right leg up, draw it as far as it will go, and the chain suddenly catches - an aberration in your routine. It is caught somewhere by the heavy lid, links pinched by a careless misplacement so that heavy stone has wedged itself on top instead of allowing them to run freely through their catch.. You strain at it, and you feel the way the shackle digs into your ankle and presses into the vein on the side. Your toes tingle, your claws twitch, and you pull against it harder still until the edge of the metal begins to cut into too-fragile flesh and you feel a sudden warmth as cold blood rises to the surface.

It would be so simple, so easy to just keep pulling. You almost do it, you almost snap you leg back further to see if the shackle is sharp enough to bite all the way to the bone, but you stop yourself before you go too far. Now isn't the time. Not yet. Not now, but soon. You still imagine what it would be like, to pull your leg up to your chest slowly, slowly, slower still, as the dull ache becomes a burning pain, and skin and muscle alike start to tear apart as they are brought past their limit. You imagine the wash of hot hot frigid heat as it pours from your ankle and down your foot. You imagine the sound of sockets separating, of bones snapping, and the sudden metallic scent of meat ready for butchering. And you imagine the inevitable, the painfully sweet release of both your cursed limb and your cursed sister.

You realize belatedly that your breaths have sped up, that your pulse has quickened, that you feel need and _alive_ and _want_ for that terrible, terrible release. You can taste how sweet it would be, and you shudder. It's all that you can do to regain focus.

Focus.

_Focus_ on the here and now and not the inevitable, the imminent, the future.

And still, it’s all you can do to keep from salivating at the thought - at the taste of what her-and-your useless limb would taste like as you devour it, marrow spilling from splintered bone and meat torn from tendons. You pull your leg up more, metal digging further into your ankle, and you imagine just how alike that would be to your fangs clamping down tighter, tighter--

Fighting back your thoughts of rending your sister's flesh between your hooked teeth, you lower your right leg again, let it rest still and weighted by its heavy chain. You give yourself time to slow your breathing, your pulse, your vitals - a tenth of a second, one second, ten more - and all is dark and quiet and still again, as it was and as it should be for just a little while longer.

For now. For only as long as you permit this charade to continue.

With a sigh, you draw up your left foot and trigger the release. You press your hands to the heavy lid, scant inches above you, and push. You could stay here for another eon to savor your thoughts, but first you have work to be done. First you have a game to finish. First you have a key step to put into motion, the crucial part that will spell ultimately spell checkmate in your favor. All else can wait.

After all, what’s another minute or hour or day or year or two? You have all the time in existence.


End file.
